Villainy
by Enarre
Summary: A lotus needs light to bloom. Oneshot.  Kind of 6996.


**Disclaimer: **_"Fan" _fiction.

**Author's Note: **These tidbits are all in sequential order and are part of the same story. Just thought I should clarify. Enjoy!

* * *

><p>I.<p>

He is used to being the villain.

It's just a role within the game that he's been playing all his life. Life is a ladder with six rungs, and he climbs it to become an even greater enemy, a greater foe, a demon, a devil. One day, he vows, he will become the demon that will take revenge on the world.

He is the bad guy, has been all his life. And he tells himself that nothing and no one will stop him from that revenge.

.

II.

She cries while he smiles.

He had been released from Vendice, and that means _she_ is useless to him now.

He ignores her soft pleas – "_Please don't leave without me" –_ and her gentle whispers – "_But I love you, Mukuro-sama" – _that he will still hear when she isn't there. He gives her a suitcase of money and sends her away with coarse words. "Go with that weak Vongola. I have no further need for you," falls through his venomous smile.

His smile slips when she turns her back to walk away, tears down one cheek. But now he has no more liabilities, no weak girl to protect.

He tells himself that when he falters during the moments that carry the backlash of her.

.

III.

Tsunayoshi keeps in contact with Mukuro for a while, despite his protests. But no matter how many times the illusionist says, "I don't care for that girl anymore," or "I hate the current Chrome," Tsuna tells him of her life. At first, there isn't much of a life to tell. She bottles herself up now, Tsuna says, shuns away everyone who isn't Mukuro, as if she's waiting for him to come back for her.

But Mukuro knows the truth. He can see that all her pleas and whispers have failed the heart that she pretends doesn't still ache.

She's waiting for him to come back **to** her. But he doesn't go, never will again.

Perhaps she still cries, perhaps she doesn't. He'll never know, because that is something even Tsuna doesn't think he deserves to know. And Mukuro knows that the Vongola Decimo is right. He doesn't deserve that.

And Mukuro pretends that the not-knowing doesn't bother him.

Because devils never care, especially about innocent puppet-girls.

Yet if he never cared, then she would still be by his side, but this he tries to forget.

Sometimes the smile that strikes fear in everyone's heart – even little Tsuna's – curves down in the shadows.

It takes Mukuro only a week to find a replacement for Chrome. But it takes Tsuna a year to give up hope on Chrome's behalf, even though Chrome had lost her hope the day Mukuro dumped her in Nanimori.

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IV.

Years fold around him like paper art, creasing the edges of him from something old as something new, and the days bloom around him like an origami lotus.

But while the years fold him in, he watches her _unfold_. Far away from him, she had breathed in his betrayal and breathed out weakness. As the Mist Guardian, she unfolds the paper petals and blooms. In the wake of her pain, she becomes beautiful, untouchable—powerful. She stands on her own, walks where she wants, and fights like no other. No longer weak, no longer dependent, Chrome Dokuro doesn't need anyone anymore.

Not even him.

Especially not him.

.

V.

When Tsuna and his Family speak with Mukuro every now and again, the illusionist sees her from afar transform into that woman of power. The woman with a kind heart but an unfailing blade. But when she looks back, when their eyes meet, Mukuro chuckles in his customary way and casually looks away. He ignores her blank looks.

Gone now are her gentle _please_ and soft _I love you. _ Now she stood as a woman freed, confident and strong, all things that he could never give her by himself.

Except that he had.

He had given all of that to her.

He had let her go, abandoned her on Tsuna's doorstep, because a lotus-girl could not bloom in his shadow. Chained by debt, by love, he knew these must be severed if she should ever find the sun. And with her pain, her tears, she blossomed.

He is used to being the bad guy, but the day he released her had been the day that he didn't _want _to be the villain in her eyes.

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VI.

One day he hears the heels of boots clicking against the debris-ridden floor of the familiar abandoned amusement park. And he knows it's her. He doesn't move, neither to greet her nor to run away. He waits for her and lounges in a chair, predatory grin on his lips.

She finds him sitting in shadows, and he wonders if she knows that he hasn't been able to bathe in the light to bloom as well. He had, after all, given up the source of his light long ago– his small hope for puppet hearts and smiles that didn't hide lies.

Chrome walks up to him, her eye never leaving his face, no longer shy and scared, and stops short in front of him. He smiles wider to hide the pain that she will never stand by his side again, not now that she has known freedom.

"I never did thank you, did I?" she asks, but it's too proud to be a question. He shakes his head anyway.

"Thank me? I've done nothing that I didn't do for myself."

But she slides past his illusions and lies and kisses him on the cheek—the closest contact she had ever shared with him.

"Thank you, Mukuro."

Not Mukuro-sama, for she serves only Tsunayoshi now, and no Mukuro-kun, for he had ripped her apart ages ago.

But he is used to being the villain, so when she leaves, he doesn't follow her.

He folds himself in shadow and gratitude, another crease in an origami devil.

.

_Fin._


End file.
